We’re back from the 2013 EcoFarm conference in sunny Monterey, California. I had such a good time last year that I figured I should take Emily with me this time. It’s an interesting conference- I attended sessions on growing blueberries, making cider, repurposing farm equipment, and so forth. Sometimes, though, we ran afoul of one of the drawbacks to the “conference” system: with concurrent sessions, you sometimes miss one good class because you are at another. For example, I missed the class on seed saving. But with Emily there, we got most of it covered using the “divide and conquer” system.
One of the highlights of the conference is the food that comes out of the dining hall. This is not normally the case at conferences, but this was a FOODIE conference! All the meals were organic, free range, non-GMO, gluten free, and any other fancy adjective you could think to stick on there, made mostly from food donated by organic farms in the area. It was scrumptious. Meals were served family style at large, 7 to 12 person tables with a lazy susan in the middle. We met many interesting folk this way. The last dinner of the conference was especially tasty, and came with locally produced organic wine and hard cider. For some reason, our tablemates were in a hurry to get on to other things, and left the two of us pretty early… along with two nearly full bottles of high-quality libation. Best not let that go to waste! We closed the shop that night, drinking and chatting and enjoying ourselves until late, finishing both bottles. We weren’t the only people with that idea… one other table stayed longer than us, and was much louder. Earlier in the evening, I’d seen one of them going from empty table to empty table, collecting all the remaining bottles of organic wine and adding them to their evening meal. Smart fellows!
Right. Now it’s time to get back to work on the cottage. We’re going to be scraping and re-graveling the driveway this week, and some other random tasks. We’ll keep you posted.
One Response to EcoFarm 2013